Our Mission

WHAT IS SENSE ?

We support speed limits that reflect the UPPER limit of SAFE travel speeds to ensure the reasonable and safe actions of the majority of drivers are legal. We are advocates for laws and enforcement designed to improve safety, traffic flow and efficiency. We reject legislation and/or enforcement which covertly or overtly robs motorists. Good laws should be based on science, and not politics.

WE ADVOCATE:

A better record from our elected officials towards honesty,integrity and transparency in applying a fair standard to the motoring public. We expect fair play in better promoting responsible driving in British Columbia. The promotion of a system that rewards all drivers for their responsible operation of a motor vehicle, and provides corrective behavior for poor driving habits.

A revised penalty point system with an empirical safety foundation. The current penalty point system does not reflect adequately at fault crashes, and does not use parity for all moving offences in British Columbia a driver is responsible for. Some stark examples of points applied to offences, where predictability of future at-fault crashes are not applicable, are MVA infractions such as driving over a firehose and unnecessary noise.

A user friendly Court system to deal with disputing an allegation, together with more available resources for defendants to use before their day in Court. SENSE believes in ongoing driver education that is both affordable and available to all licenced drivers.

WE ENCOURAGE:

A penalty point system with an empirical safety foundation. The current penalty point system does not reflect at fault crash risk and worse – some offences have nothing to do with the actions of a driver.

Fairer, user friendly traffic courts. Have you ever tried to figure out how to effectively defend yourself from an unfair traffic ticket? The resources are virtually nonexistent. Vancouver Police can be surly and unsympathetic, and the province penalizes you for fighting for what is right by incentivizing you not to challenging a ticket.

Prima Facie Defense. Permitting a defense of necessity when challenging a ticket in court, i.e. if a driver could prove exceeding a speed limit was the safest action under the circumstances the case could be won.

Honesty from our elected representatives. Let’s hear the straight goods from elected representatives instead of the parroting of simplistic slogans from uneducated politicians who simply read scripts supplied by empire building bureaucrats.

WE OPPOSE:

The deployment of enforcement resources in areas that by design yield a high volume of offences (fishing holes) when an engineering solution is available.

The seizure of motor vehicles operated by drivers in British Columbia for exceeding the speed limit by 40 km/h (25 mph) when the design of the road is such to make the posted speed artificially low.

Elected politicians using speed enforcement as a dependable revenue source. These same politicians are using legislation such as the BC Civil Assets Forfeiture Act, which was originally intended to seize the assets obtained illegally by hard core criminals, to arbitrarily seize motor vehicles of owners accused not convicted of driving offences – even on hearsay!

Photo radar and red light cameras are not fool proof, have little if any safety benefit,setting an unfair burden of proof on the registered owners of motor vehicles to prove their innocence.

The use of traffic tickets and penalty points to generate revenue.

Using the motorist to extract dishonest taxes. Tickets are sometimes nothing more than a tax based on a lie. Enforcement in “fishing holes” is arbitrary and does little for safety.

Speed Traps or “fishing holes” – enforcement in areas where there is an engineering solution rather than an enforcement solution to safety concerns.

Photo Enforcement – photo radar and red light cameras are not fool proof, have little if any safety benefit, are an infringement of privacy and set an unfair burden of proof on the owners of motor vehicles to prove innocence, among many other problems.

Circumvention of due process.

Unreasonable police powers.

Vehicle seizures for anything other than extreme circumstances. 40 kph (25 mph) over an under posted highway speed limit is not an extreme circumstance.

BC Civil Assets Forfeiture Act, which was originally intended to seize the assets obtained illegally by hard core criminals, now being used to arbitrarily seize motor vehicles of owners accused not convicted of driving offences – even on hearsay!

BC Liberal Community Charter. After their election in 2001, the BC Liberals made good on a promise to share ticket revenue with municipal governments. This is a conflict of interest which encourages communities to issue traffic tickets.

Politicians using ICBC as a piggy bank. The BC Liberals are in the process of taking over $900M from ICBC for general revenue. This money belongs to the ratepayers and drivers of BC and nobody else. This is a dishonest and underhanded tax.